Friends and Drinking

This past Friday night, I was drinking with some friends at our usual bar that we frequent called The Roost in the Silverlake/Atwater Village area. The Jewish guy and his Asian girlfriend, his two Mexican friends plus one other individual, my childhood friend. While we were there, it was like any other get together that we normally do except that the Jewish guy’s girlfriend decided to leave early because she was tired. This was something that I’ve been noticing as of late. It used to be that she’ll stick around until late nights with all of us drinking and having a good time. Nowadays, it would appear that it has become a chore for her to stick around. I don’t know, ya know? Maybe it has. Maybe it hasn’t. Not that big of a deal to me either way but just something I’ve noticed over a course of time. If she’s got something to do the next day, that’s cool. If she’s genuinely tired, that’s cool too. But it’s just one of those things where we sit down, we have our drink, we catch up, if only briefly, but suddenly she has to leave. It’s a mood killer, to say the least. But at least, she stuck it out until after we’ve said our piece and got all caught up with each other, which really isn’t much, all things considered. I’ll give her “politeness” credit for that.

Anyway, during the course of the night, my Jewish buddy decided to tell me that his part time job now turned full time gig actually provides health insurance and that the carrier is Kaiser Permanente. Wow. Kaiser. That’s like the cream of the crop of health insurance carriers, at least in California, ya know? He goes on to tell me that he hasn’t had health insurance in a long time and he’s struggling to figure out how best to use it. Shoot, if it were me and I get free health insurance from my employer, I’d use it to get all the shots and check-ups that I can get. Unfortunately, I do not work for such an employer as of yet.

I’m happy for my buddy. It’s been a long time coming since we all got laid off at Borders several years ago and then by the sheerest of luck, a friend of his hooked him up at this airplane carrier gig that lasted for quite a while, very stressful job, but ultimately got let go for whatever stupid reason. And, I suppose, he had remained quite bitter at that job ending abruptly for another long while. That is, until just recently where he started looking for work again and bounced around for a bit before landing in this current one as the IT guy for some non-profit Catholic organization. In that time when he was let go, he was pretty much jobless for a while and he had mooched off of his girlfriend for some time as well. And surprisingly, his girlfriend actually let him and put up with it through out that entire time, but it wasn’t without its costs of helping out with her family from time to time, which is a fair trade, all things considered. I mean, shoot, man. That’s about as fortunate as it gets, ya know? I wish I had that kind of lucky moments in life but the fact of the matter is that I don’t. At least not in the same likeness and degree. Am I a bit jealous that he has had a bit more luck than I have? Sure. But despite that, I don’t hold that against my buddy who has been a good friend to me when I lost my job or when I picked up a job that turned out to be a shitty one and subsequently left it, with his full support.

This job that I currently hold that pays substantially lesser than my last job? I’m trying to see it as a stepping stone for my next job. I’m learning a variety of new software programs that I’ve never used before and that I could use at my next job: Quickbooks, XSellCo, Solid Commerce and Zopim Zendesk. Plus, I’m trying out a variety of business ideas that I’ve wanted to try in my last job but couldn’t because of the industry that I was in.

Aside from that though, and getting back to our drinking escapade, I got really drunk that night. And my Jewish friend suggested that I take an Uber home, to which I declined. I’ve always driven home drunk and had no issues. When there were checkpoints present, I had no issues circumventing them. I always got home safe and I always got my friends home safe. And I did it again. This time though, my Jewish friend elected to stay at The Roost a bit longer. I guess he wasn’t done drinking yet. As for me and my childhood friend, we hightailed it out of there.

Later that evening, I guess I got a bit emotional with my childhood friend. We were sobering up at Maya’s Tacos in Lincoln Heights and we were talking about life. I’ve always talked about life with my childhood friend. He’s really the only friend that I’ve shared the most with respect to my personal life and I’m thankful that we’re still friends after all these years. He’s practically my brother for knowing so much about me and I treat him as such. I try to give him the best that I can afford and that time would allow. And even when time wouldn’t allow, I would make time for him.